Nuvole e Lenzuola
by Lotus Promises
Summary: Sometimes the right choices are ones we don't know how to make.  When Gokudera's pillars start to crumble, will anyone be there to stop his fall?


_Feeling the desire to steal time  
In order to be able to give it another meaning._  
- "Nuvole e Lenzuola", Negramaro 

**One week prior to the Future Arc**

I don't know why we're fighting this time. I don't know if it's because of something I said, if he brought up his stupid school rule about cigarettes, or if it was something else entirely. It's not like it matters. What matters is that the air is acrid, heavy with heat, thick from dust caught up in the explosions. His narrow grey eyes probe deep against mine, like knives, like the impact of his metal tonfas against my side. I shy away, avert my gaze, running as much from the predatory way he looks at me as I am from the undeniable threat of weapons clutched in slender hands. I fling explosives from my fingers with little hope or intention – it's not as if he doesn't just glide through the smoke, anyway – and fire roars to life in the air, that booming sound like fireworks. Like Fourth of July, and watching him stand back-to-back with Juudaime and for once feeling like _he was on our side_. 

And then he's upon me, no safe cushion of distance, no hot air to keep metal from my skin, keep his eyes from mine. I gasp, sharp and almost surprised as I find it hard to breathe with the boy that hates crowds, hates people, hates _me_, suddenly violating my personal space. He doesn't give me room to breathe, let alone the time to do it in. My aqua green eyes are wide as his nose almost touches my own, still every bit the predator as he leers closer. He smiles, blood tracing down a cheek bone, pearly white teeth that gleam sharp over the ledge of his full bottom lip. 

"I'll bite you to death." 

He doesn't say it this time, but he doesn't need to; I hear it in every frantic beat of my own heart. _He could eat me_. He grabs me by the wrist, spins me around and my body presses back against the wall of one of the buildings of this stupid school he loves so much. Bricks scrape at my spine through the thin button-down shirt of the stupid uniform and distantly I hear metal hitting gravel, once, then again, and stilling. It isn't until one of his hands slide calloused fingertips across my cheek, that I realize he's dropped one of his weapons. 

He still has that smile, the one that tells me just how much he likes that I'm hurting, but despite the narrowed set of his eyes, there's something different. There's a tension between us, in catching breaths, in the way that his fingers trail burning hot over my skin. He's rough, violent even in soft gestures; he presses too hard, scratches with blunt nails and leaves pink furrows as he drags his fingers down the side of my neck. I don't think he knows any other way to be, except for being harsh. 

"You only ever look at him," he says, fingers grabbing my chin, yanking so I can't look anywhere except for at him, at those sharp eyes, and this time our gazes lock. 

_Him_. Tsuna. The person that I trail after like a loyal hound, clinging to the title of 'right-hand man', despite the fact that he still refuses to acknowledge it. I throw myself into serving him with such exuberance that I always get it wrong, always fuck up and make more trouble for him and everyone else than anything. And yet he still smiles at me, scuffs his feet into the dirt and says 'Gokudera-kun' with more tenderness than anyone in the past decade, no matter how much I exasperate him. And that's why I love him. That's why it doesn't matter if he loves me back, even if I yearn for it like something necessary. 

Looking into his eyes, I see for the first time that the way he looks at me isn't hate, that the standoffishness between us is just Hibari's damned inability to express himself like a normal person. Although, really, what about him has ever been _normal_? 

I don't see him. 

Not like he wants me to. The hint of something I might mistakenly call affection in his hands isn't enough to change the fact that Tsuna saved me, kept me from blowing myself sky-high when he had no reason to care. Despite the fact that Hibari almost seems like there might be something under the violence, sharp eyes and threats, like there might be something to the conflict and the way we explode at one another without justification, I can't step away. I can't bring myself to give him a chance, when I need Tsuna more than I need to breathe. 

Fingers feel sinfully warm where he holds me, curling against my cheek, his eyes demanding answers that we both already know. His hand slowly sliding from my chin, down against my throat and I can feel my pulse pounding fast against his palm. I feel like a bird, pinned beneath the paws of a cat as his fingers tighten to where it's almost a threat. My mouth is dry as I try to speak, and my face flushes as I let the tip of my tongue wet my lips and feel him watch me. It takes long moments before I can finally speak. I almost don't want to. 

"I can't see the Clouds for the Sky." 

Instead, I resign myself to watching his face cloud over. I know when a storm's coming. I don't need to pay attention to the way his eyes squint, the way his shoulders curl inward, the shift of his feet against the gravel on the asphalt. 

I do anyway. 

His hands release me, and without support, my body starts to sag. I struggle to get my balance back, managing it just as the end of a tonfa hits me in the solar plexus and I cough, choke, double-over as the impact knocks the breath from me. Fighting back is even more useless than usual. Even more useless when I can't not see the anger and hurt in the eyes of the one person I thought didn't feel anything. 

He breaks three of my ribs. I can't help wondering if he was trying to break my heart.


End file.
